A Living Wage for Graduate Workers
The MIT Living Wage calculator indicates the amount needed for a “minimum subsistence wage” in various states and metro areas; this wage does not include any funds for restaurant meals, entertainment, travel, savings, etc. For Bloomington, a living wage for a single adult with no children is $34,094; for an adult with one child, a living wage is $68,596.
The College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) commissioned a task force on Graduate Student Funding in 2019 in the context of “current threats to the viability of our graduate programs.” Their conclusion was that in COAS stipends were approximately $7,000 lower than what graduate workers required for basic living expenses in Bloomington. See the full report here.
After our historic Spring 2022 strike, we won a raise of the minimum SAA stipends to $22,000, a 46% increase over the previous minimum SAA stipend of $15,000. Before this raise, some departments were paid as little as $7,000 a year. We also won a 3% raise ($660 a year) for returning SAAs for the 2023–2024 academic year.
Graduate workers at IU need substantial wage increases.